Life cycle assessment of energy and CO₂ emissions for residential buildings in Jakarta, Indonesia

In order to develop low energy and low carbon residential buildings, it is important to understand their detailed energy profiles. This study provides the results of life cycle assessment of energy and CO₂ emissions for residential buildings in Jakarta, Indonesia. A survey was conducted in the city in 2012 to obtain both material inventory and household energy consumption data within the selected residential buildings (n=300), which are classified into three categories, namely simple, medium and luxurious houses. The results showed that the average embodied energy of simple, medium and luxurious houses was 58.5, 201.0, and 559.5 GJ, respectively. It was found that total embodied energy of each house can be explained by its total floor area alone with high accuracy in respective house categories. Meanwhile, it was seen that operational energy usage patterns varied largely among house categories as well as households especially in the simple and medium houses. The energy consumption for cooling was found to be the most significant factor of the increase in operational energy from simple to luxurious houses. Further, in the life cycle energy, the operational energy accounted for much larger proportions of about 86-92% than embodied energy regardless of the house categories. The life cycle CO₂ emissions for medium and luxurious houses were larger than that of simple houses by 2 and 6 times on average. In the simple houses, cooking was the largest contributor to the CO₂ emissions (25%), while the emissions caused by cooling increased largely with the house category and became the largest contributors in the medium (26%) and luxurious houses (41%).